Page 11 of Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Mechanic

“No.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

He glances at me. Just a flicker, eyes off the road for half a second.

“I haven’t done this in a long time,” he says.

“Driven up a mountain?”

“Been around someone I want to be around.”

The words land in my chest and stay there. No deflection, no qualifier. Just the blunt, graceless truth, delivered the same way he delivers everything. Like a wrench turning a bolt. No extra motion.

The road levels out and the trees thin and suddenly the whole valley is below us. Copper Peak is a toy town, the Trading Post a cluster of tiny stone squares, Prospect Street a thread of light. The peaks across the valley are still streaked with snow on the north-facing bowls, and the light is turning everything rose and gold.

Beck parks at the edge of a clearing. A maintenance shed sits off to the side, the big bay doors closed, grooming machines visible through the windows. But the view is the thing. The entire world is laid out below us, and the sky is enormous, and the air is so clean, it almost hurts to breathe.

“This is where you’ll teach,” he says.

I look at him.

“Those runs.” He points to a series of wide-open trails below the summit, groomed and smooth even in summer. “Those are the intermediate progression runs. That’s where the ski school puts Level Two candidates for their teaching practicum.”

My throat tightens. He didn’t bring me up here to show me a pretty view. He brought me up here to show me my future. The actual, physical place where the thing everyone dismisses is going to happen.

“Can I ask you something?” I ask.

“Sure.”

“Why did you do this?”

He turns off the engine. The silence is sudden and total, just wind and the distant sound of water running somewhere below the snowline. He looks at me, and the gruffness is still there, the furrow between his brows, the set jaw. But underneath all of it, for the first time, I can see what he’s actually feeling. It’s all over him. In his eyes, in the tension in his shoulders, in the way his hands haven’t left the steering wheel.

“Because somebody should’ve done it a long time ago,” he says.

I unbuckle my seatbelt.

His eyes track the movement. His breathing changes, just enough that I can hear it in the quiet cab.

“Callie.”

“Yeah?”

“If you come over here, I’m not going to be able to stop at a kiss.”

“I know.”

“I need you to know that.”

“I know that too.”

I close the distance between us.

Our mouths crash together again, hotter this time, tongues sliding, teeth nipping. His hands are everywhere—cupping my face, sliding down my neck, gripping my waist like he’s afraid I’ll disappear. I climb across the bench seat and into his lap, straddling him, and the low groan that vibrates from his chest into mine makes heat pool low in my belly.